


Hyssop

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s04e04 Metamorphosis, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-09
Updated: 2009-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:12:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michelle doesn't know whether she can believe the man who tried to kill her and Jack and their child. She doesn't know whether she can afford to disbelieve him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyssop

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Exodus 12:22.

Missouri mandates a twenty-four-hour waiting period between a woman's doctor telling her all about the risks of abortion and the woman actually being able to get the abortion. Michelle spends those hours imagining her child. (A daughter. She wants a daughter.) First steps and first homecoming dance. First successful baking project and first heartbreak. A woman with Jack's hair and eyes and bloody chin, a teenager who eats enough for six and prefers her meat begging for help, an infant in Michelle's arms who drinks her mother's blood for mother's milk.

She doesn't know whether she can believe the man who tried to kill them. She doesn't know whether she can afford not to.

She hadn't told Jack because he was acting so erratically. It wouldn't be right to share such joyous news when neither of them was in a mood for celebration. Oh God she wants Jack's child so badly.

She _supported_ this Godforsaken law. She wasn't wrong, she knows she wasn't wrong, but how many people has she condemned to the living hell she'll be in until this _thing_ is no longer eating her from the inside?

Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners. Holy Mary mother of God. Holy Mary mother of God. Holy Mary mother of—Holy Mary—

Michelle will never be a mother.

("My husband is dead!" she screamed at the physician, everything in her sight vivid red. "I cannot face this child without him!")

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us—lead us not into temptation—

She runs the gauntlet outside the clinic, deliberately conjuring the image of blood on her daughter's teeth.

Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

When it is over, she drives to Emily's. She can't face her own home now. Her sister offers her a drink, red wine, red red red smash.

Emily takes her to church. Michelle dips her fingers in the holy water, wash away her sins in the blood of the Lamb, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river—

The whole story comes spilling out in the confessional. Not the why, just the what. She murdered her daughter, knowing full well she was committing one of the worst sins there is. God knows why. No one else needs to.

Michelle volunteers at a health clinic for the un- and underinsured instead of rejoining the protestors outside the clinic where she had her child murdered. She takes Jack's life insurance money and enrolls in an early-childhood-ed program. She sets up a home daycare and offers a discount to single parents. This is her penance: to do everything she can do to ensure that no other women will think themselves compelled to murder their children.

She thinks of the brothers who killed her husband and wonders if they are blades in the hand of God or of Satan, if Jack's death is part of their penance or part of their crime. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners, Michelle and Jack and their child and the man who meant to kill Jack and the men who did, especially the men who did, and thanks be to God that Michelle doesn't know who they are or how to find them, that she can't ask how they knew Jack was a monster and her child would be, that her penance can't include compounding her sin.

_And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you_—Exodus 12:13


End file.
